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Identifying Butterflies in Taiwan

I am certainly no expert in the field, however I’ve been asked by numerous people the sources I use to help me identify the butterflies I photograph in Taiwan. It all started with a trip to the Guandu Nature Park [關渡自然公園] in Taipei to toy with my then recently purchased Nikkor 55-200vr “budget telephoto”. The pictures I went home with were absolutely terrible, but I did walk home with three ID books: One for birds, one for dragonflies, and one for butterflies. The books were inexpensive at $200NT each. The butterfly one: Taiwan’s Commonly Seen Butterflies [Chinese Link (台灣常見的蝴蝶)] contains 133 different species of butterflies. The book contains photos of the different species as they exist in nature, lists scientific name, Chinese name, a few brief points about identifying, as well as diet and habitats.

Before long I was coming across pictures of butterflies that I could not identify using the small ID book. I was finally finding butterflies outside of the 133 commonly seen ones listed in the book [which can’t be very hard since Taiwan is home to over 400 species of butterflies]. There was a nature store at the new Eslite bookstore in Taichung whose name escapes me, anyways I picked up the much larger Taiwan’s Butterfly Example Book [sorry for the very terrible translation, here’s the Chinese and link (台灣蝴蝶圖鑑)]. The book contains over 270 species and points out distinctive features of each species, and a lot more information concerning distribution, habitats, and diets than the previously mentioned book.